In the Black World, the Preacher and Teacher embodied
once the ideals of this people--the strife for another and a
juster world, the vague dream of righteousness, the mystery
of knowing; but to-day the danger is that these ideals, with
their simple beauty and weird inspiration, will suddenly sink
to a question of cash and a lust for gold. Here stands this
black young Atalanta, girding herself for the race that must
be run; and if her eyes be still toward the hills and sky as in
the days of old, then we may look for noble running; but
what if some ruthless or wily or even thoughtless Hippomenes
lay golden apples before her? What if the Negro people be
wooed from a strife for righteousness, from a love of know-
ing, to regard dollars as the be-all and end-all of life? What if
to the Mammonism of America be added the rising Mam-
monism of the re-born South, and the Mammonism of this
South be reinforced by the budding Mammonism of its half-
wakened black millions? Whither, then, is the new-world
quest of Goodness and Beauty and Truth gone glimmering?
Must this, and that fair flower of Freedom which, despite the
jeers of latter-day striplings, sprung from our fathers' blood,
must that too degenerate into a dusty quest of gold,--into
lawless lust with Hippomenes?
The hundred hills of Atlanta are not all crowned with
factories.
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